Budgeting a progressive future

Terence Heath, who blogs at his own Republic of T and at the Campaign for America's Future, announced Tuesday that he and Sara Robinson, who blogs at the Campaign for America's Future and sometimes at Orcinus, are launching a series at CAF "about the progressive values at the core of the president's budget, how to talk about it importance, and what progressives can do to pass the first truly progressive budget we've seen in decades."

That's exciting as hell. But that was at the end of the column. What Terence said before he got to that part was what really got to me.

Terence reminded me that we Americans -- most of us anyway -- don't really know what something truly progressive and new can look like. "The real transformation hasn't happened yet," he wrote.

People don’t yet have a tangible vision of something better than the past eight years or the current crisis. They have hope, but hope wears thin if people have nothing that they can see with their own eyes, hold in their hands, or experience in their own lives as evidence of the possibility of something better.

Quoting from "Ending Slavery" by Kevin Bales (about modern slavery), Terence wrote that

It was only when people began to have a vision of something better that they would rush toward change. He noted how it was only after reforms occurred or economic prosperity arrived that popular revolt began.

And in that passage, Bales was paraphrasing the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville -- author of "Democracy in America -- from a letter he wrote in 1853.

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

That is just about where we are now, as Terence put it, "the anteroom of that transformational moment."

People are waking up, seeing what's been done to us for the last 30 years -- and particularly the last 8 -- and starting to grumble. Some of us are much more clear about what we're grumbling about, and some of us are just plain misguided about what we're grumbling about. But discontent is fast becoming the order of the day.

Now we need a direction, and the impetus to move in that direction. The president's budget may be just the ticket -- and you know the Republicans and the Blue Dawgs are gonna be fighting tooth and nail to limit what this budget can do. They've already started.

As Terence points out, this budget sings a new tune about America and its people. It's about an America whose people rely on one another, who work together, who cooperate -- who aren't out to see "what's in it for me." It is, he wrote, "a progressive budget that has at its core the understanding that government can and should have an important role in finding ways out of the current crisis and in reviving the economy."

More than that, it's a budget that recognizes that — rather than the 'You're on your own,' everyone-for-themselves conservative policy of the past 30 years — recovering from this crisis, reviving the economy, and thriving as families, communities, and as a nation means recognizing that we have some degree of responsibility to and for one another, because our faces are undeniably tied together.

That, itself, would be transformational. But first we have to offer more than more than a vision of something better. We have to make the beginnings of that vision, and the progressive values it embodies, felt in the lives of more Americans.

Now is our time to deliver. If we can turn progressive values into policies that make a real impact in the lives of every day people — whether it's jobs, health care, etc. — the transformation the country needs, and that the world needs us to make, will almost take care of itself.

This budget has its shortcomings. It can't possibly be all things to all people. But it is a world away from the policies of the past. We could do far worse than to pass it -- and frankly, letting it fail isn't an option. Not if we really, truly want to see the change many of us have been seeking.

It will happen, of course -- the transformation. As I've said before, it's just a question of whether we want to do it now, the hard way, or later -- maybe another generation later -- the excruciating painful way. As usual, the Republicans are looking at it through their own myopic lenses. What we're bequeathing to our children and grandchildren is not mountains of debt but a society that takes its strength from its people rather than the size of a handful of people's portfolios.

Either way, the time is right. It won't be easy. And it will likely be terrifying -- great change, real transformation always is. But the old ways have finally failed. They're on life support. They can continue that way for a while yet. But the end will come.

I'd rather pull the plug now and start the heavy lifting of change.

News Writer
AWOP Political Contributing Editor
Author of Stop the Press Blog

Cross-posted at Stop the Press!

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Peace Y'all